Throw them outMPs’ corruption seems limitlessTHE first time the cash-on-camera shame became public, the whole country was nauseated and the respect for the elected representatives took a nosedive. It was thought that the others of the ilk would be shocked enough to desist from similar shady activities.

Grooming lawyersNeeded a law varsity in the NorthTHE Punjab Government’s proposal to set up a law university near Chandigarh is most welcome. Such a university was long overdue in the North.
Haryana, too, has rightly decided to set up a similar institution at Manesar.

Winds of changeBhutan’s moves towards democracyNEW winds have been blowing in the Land of the Thunder Dragon, named after the storms that blow through the mountains and valleys of this Himalayan kingdom, for quite a few years now.
Bhutan’s King Jingme Singye Wangchuk’s announcement of holding
parliamentary elections in 2008, by when he would abdicate in favour
of his son, has been greeted with some misgivings in his own country.

Nuclear deal and after Opinion divided in Washingtonby T.P. SreenivasanTHE think-tanks in Washington are divided right in the middle”, said Mr Stephen Cohen, the South Asia specialist at the Brookings Institution. Nothing unusual, I thought to myself. But he proceeded to say: “In Brookings itself, the opinion is divided. So it is in the CSIS, Carnegie and Stimson Centre.”

Bumbledom and Bumblebeeby Raj ChatterjeeITS inertia is its saving virtue because it limits the damage that incompetent rulers can do.”
The passage is taken from a leading article written many years ago by
an old friend and veteran journalist, the late Frank Mores. He was
referring to our political masters.

News as entertainment
by Nilanjan MukhopadhyayTILL recently Manohar Kahaniyan was among the most well read Hindi magazines. It had a readership of more than six million, and along with other magazines from the same stable that has now closed - Maya and Satya Katha - had a combined readership of more than 1.5 crore.

Politicians, Maoists unite against Nepal Kingby Naveen S. GrewalTHERE is a clear division as to whose writ runs in Nepal. The state controls cities like Kathmandu, but the Maoists run their own government of sorts in the rural areas.
The passage is taken from a leading article written many years ago by an old
friend and veteran journalist, the late Frank Mores. He was referring to our
political masters.

Bangalore gears up for women’s safetyby Jangveer SinghTHE recent rape and murder of a woman BPO employee by a pick-up driver has exposed just how fragile the foundations of this edifice really are.

THE first time the cash-on-camera shame became public, the whole country was nauseated and the respect for the elected representatives took a nosedive. It was thought that the others of the ilk would be shocked enough to desist from similar shady activities. But then politicians are known for their rhino skins. Similar scandals are hitting the headlines with unfailing regularity. It is an established norm among those engaged in shady activities that when the heat is on, all the rest immediately lie low. Our MPs have no such qualms. They seem to be up and about even when their colleagues are being exposed. They take money for asking questions and even siphon off a substantial portion of the funds allocated to them under the MP local area development scheme (MPLADS). Just goes to show how brazen they have become, and also, how prevalent corruption among them is. Since they have stooped to such a gutter level, they deserve to be not only expelled from Parliament, but also barred from holding any public office in future. That should be besides the criminal proceedings that should be launched against them for polishing off public money in such a blatant manner.

This is also the right time to abolish the MPLADS scheme in toto. MPs are there to legislate, not to ladle out largesse to their cronies and themselves. This was an unholy scheme right from the beginning. The then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao who was short of support wanted to keep MPs in good humour by putting such a huge sum at their disposal. By salting it away, they have only proved that it is not sensible to put meat in an eagle’s nest for safekeeping or public distribution.

The honest MPs – yes, there are some such still — must be aghast at the antics of their colleagues. Like the bad fish, the few who have been caught and those who have been on the same wavelength but have escaped the hidden camera are tarring the whole community. It is for the community now to hand them exemplary punishment so that its reputation can be redeemed somewhat. It is said that things have to hit the nadir before they start improving. This indeed is the lowest point in India’s parliamentary history.

THE Punjab Government’s proposal to set up a law university near Chandigarh is most welcome. Such a university was long overdue in the North. Haryana, too, has rightly decided to set up a similar institution at Manesar. This region is in need of good law universities because legal education has suffered a setback in the absence of such universities. Consider the difference between the lawyers well trained in various facets of law and legal jurisprudence and those without any training and grounding. Over the years, law as a discipline has undergone so many changes that it needs to be studied as a specialised subject covering various areas like business, human rights, medical ethics, environment and intellectual property rights. Clearly, studying law just to obtain a degree and join the Bar will not serve the interests of the judiciary.

If a law university is set up, it will groom future lawyers and judges, streamline the justice system and, above all, ensure speedy dispensation of justice. Ideally, it must be a five-year integrated course after Plus Two as is followed in institutions like the National Law School of India University in Bangalore. This way, bright and enterprising students can be trained well on legal studies with proper exposure to other allied disciplines like political science, constitutional law, economics, sociology and criminology.

The practice of graduates joining the three-year law course needs to be discouraged because experience suggests that this system does not attract talented, meritorious and committed students. In most states, the legal education system has virtually collapsed because it has failed to attract talent and it is only the rejects in other disciplines who opt for law. Clearly, weak students with no aptitude and commitment to legal studies are a liability and hold no promise for the judiciary. It would be worthwhile if a nation-wide Common Entrance Test is held for admission to various law universities. The test, which should be on the IIM/IIT pattern, will definitely attract the country’s best brains to the legal profession and enrich the judicial proceedings.

NEW winds have been blowing in the Land of the Thunder Dragon, named after the storms that blow through the mountains and valleys of this Himalayan kingdom, for quite a few years now. Bhutan’s King Jingme Singye Wangchuk’s announcement of holding parliamentary elections in 2008, by when he would abdicate in favour of his son, has been greeted with some misgivings in his own country. Political reform has been in the making here since the 1990s. Bhutan already has a 150-seat, unicameral, National Assembly, 105 members of which are elected from the villages. A draft Constitution, which includes a bill of rights and limits the King’s power, even making his impeachment possible, was released in March this year for public review

King Wangchuk has famously talked about the Gross National Happiness of Bhutan being more important than GNP, but it is clear Bhutan is an under-developed country that is still coming to terms with its tryst with modernity. Even the introduction of television a few years ago has been controversial, with many traditionalists blaming TV for crime, drug-abuse, prostitution and a general, Western-style materialism and malaise. While most agree that feudal structures have to go, they are not sure if democracy will not create corruption and inefficiency. Democracy will not necessarily resolve the problem of one lakh Bhutanese of Nepali-Hindu origin, who were forced to flee Buddhist Bhutan to Nepal after being targeted by the regime.

The change, however, is desirable, and the King should start facilitating the emergence of political voices in the public sphere, so that a genuine two-party system as envisioned can be put in place. It is important that India track developments closely, and nurture its relationship with Bhutan. It was after some initial dithering that the King acted decisively against the camps of Northeast insurgent groups like the ULFA and the NDFB in 2003. The success of that crackdown in part laid the groundwork for the current peace moves and ceasefires. There is also a Maoist threat to the Kingdom which India has to take seriously.

Nuclear deal and after Opinion divided in Washingtonby T.P. Sreenivasan

THE think-tanks in Washington are divided right in the middle”, said Mr Stephen Cohen, the South Asia specialist at the Brookings Institution. Nothing unusual, I thought to myself. But he proceeded to say: “In Brookings itself, the opinion is divided. So it is in the CSIS, Carnegie and Stimson Centre.” Well, that is serious. Think-tanks in the United States ordinarily have coordinated views within themselves as each has a history and an ideology of its own. It is normal to characterise one as conservative and another as liberal. When it comes to non-proliferation, there is even a consensus among them. But on the matter of the India-US nuclear deal, there is no common position even within individual think-tanks.

Three of them, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Stimson Center joined together to hear me on “India after the India-US Nuclear Deal”. Questioning was not hostile when I outlined the different strands of Indian opinion on the deal. In fact, they seemed relieved that there were strong views against it in India. The consensus seemed to be that there was no way that the deal would pass muster in the US Congress without important changes. The most optimistic assessment was that a long dialogue process between the Congress and the Bush Administration on the one hand and the governments of the US and India would eventually lead to a new deal that would promote bilateral relationship without hurting non-proliferation.

Some asserted that the US had nothing to lose if India rejected an amended deal, but they were anxious to know how the bilateral relationship would move forward if the deal fell through. The majority felt that President Bush should go ahead with his visit to India, but none was sure as to what the President would accomplish in India. They were groping for an agenda that would include agriculture, HIV/AIDS, energy development, democracy initiatives and, on the nuclear side, security and safety of nuclear assets.

To my suggestion that the President would make a big splash if he announced his support to India for permanent membership of the Security Council, the reaction was mute, as though it was an outlandish suggestion. At best, they would say that it was a “deliverable” that would come very much down the line. There was nothing in it for the President to bring back, they said.

In the wilderness of issues that came up on both sides, it was difficult to pinpoint the “deal breakers”. But, clearly, one concern was the problem of vertical proliferation in India, while the concern in the past was only over horizontal proliferation. Both the Democrats and the Republicans would like some clarity on the number of nuclear warheads India would have eventually, though they would not use the word “cap” because of Indian sensitivity.

They harped on the question of production of fissile materials and wanted a moratorium as an essential element in the deal. The nature of the safeguards that India would voluntary accept also was a matter of concern to the American thinkers. On the Indian side, the hardest problem would be the separation issue, it was agreed. The American insistence on a certain pattern in this separation would naturally go against the grain. In any event, the separation would be expensive and time consuming.

A former State Department official observed that the fundamental problem with the deal was the absence of verification measures. Bilateral arrangements, he felt, would not satisfy the international community if adequate verification measures were not in place. In this context, it was pointed out that the first round of discussions with the Nuclear Suppliers Group in Vienna was not very successful. Those who had abandoned their nuclear programmes in the hope of getting technology would look askance at the Indian model and feel encouraged to take the same path. Others, who had hesitated to have weapons programmes would also feel less inhibited. The multilateral nature of the NSG tended to rely more on verification measures rather than on mutual trust, which was an important element in bilateral agreements.

There were no two opinions on the Iran programme and the essential linkage between the nuclear deal and the vote in Vienna. All of them felt that the Indian vote was a major gain for non-proliferation. My explanation that the Indian position had always been that Iran should abide by its obligations under the NPT fell on deaf ears as, in their eyes, the positive vote had a major significance of its own, even with the explanation.

A young researcher asked whether India had abandoned its argument that the non-proliferation regime was discriminatory, now that India had found its own way to go around the NPT to obtain nuclear cooperation from the international community. The answer to that was that we would very much like the NPT to change, but, in the interim, practical ways had to be found to move forward. India had not subscribed to the regime, but it had also not tried to subvert it.

The divide in the opinion within the American think-tanks gets reflected in Congress as most of the staffers are part of one think-tank or another or at least participate in their deliberations to get material to advise their Congressmen. Many in Congress consider the
Administration's position that the deal must go through without any amendment as soon as possible as untenable. The old debate between the “relationists” and the non-proliferationists has surfaced again, with some Democratic “relationists” having crossed the floor over to the other
side.

The writer is a former Ambassador of India to the United Nations, Vienna, and a former Governor for India,
IAEA, Vienna.

ITS inertia is its saving virtue because it limits the damage that incompetent rulers can do.”

The passage is taken from a leading article written many years ago by an old friend and veteran journalist, the late Frank Mores. He was referring to our political masters.

On another occasion, he described officialdom in India as “bumbledom”. My reason for recalling the substitution will be apparent later.

“Bureaucrat” is perhaps too high and mighty a word to use for the petty official who, to all intents and purposes, rules the life of the common man, that unfortunate individual, you and I, on whose behalf our politicians in power are constantly shedding crocodile tears.

Inertia may or may not be the saving virtue of our so-called public servants, but it is their vices that cause serious concern to those whom they allegedly serve.

First and foremost among these vices or failings is what I would describe as “woodenheadedness,” or the incapacity to see beyond their noses and the inability or reluctance to cut a bit of red tape when, by doing so, some poor fellow or his wife would be saved a load of misery brought about by hours of waiting in some poky little office, hours spent in running from one office to another, hours wasted in filling up forms in triplicate and, finally, returning home in despair or getting the thing done by resorting to the time-honoured custom of greasing a few itching palms.

Some years ago I had to have my passport renewed. So I took myself to the regional passport office in New Delhi to get two application forms only to find about 50 other people trying to do the same thing. I went round to the P.R.O., a polite and helpful lady who advised me not to waste my time in the hall but to buy forms at the G.P.O. in Kashmere Gate in Old Delhi where I lived at the time. But before bringing them here,” she added, “you must have them and your photographs attested by either a ..., and she gave me a list of dignitaries authorised to do so.

“But I don’t know anyone like that” I said. “Can’t I have them attested by the Pro-Vice Chancellor of Delhi University who is my neighbour and knows me well. Surely, he is a responsible person.”

“Sorry” said the lady “A university is an autonomous body and the law says...”

“Then the law is an ass” I said, trying to be facetious. The lady’s smile changed to a scowl. “You must not say such things in a government office.”

“I didn’t say it”, I told her. “Mr Bumble did”.

“Mr Bumble?” she said. “I don’t know any such officer. In which department does he work?”

“He doesn’t I said. “He was a character in Oliver Twist.” I saw the colour mounting in her cheeks and beat a hasty retreat.

The next day I went to the G.P.O. The clerk at the counter said: “Shrimanji, we haven’t had those forms for the past six months. You had better go to the regional passport office in New Delhi.”

Fortunately, a friend working in a foreign airline gave me the forms and offered to have them and my photographs attested by an official authorised to do so.

But there is hope for us all. No less a person than Linus Pauling, twice a winner of the Nobel Prize, once declared that a pill a day of vitamin C not only keeps a cold away but also increases one’s I.Q. All we need is an ordinance making it obligatory for all government and semi-government servants to take a regular dose of vitamin C, failing which their increments will be stopped. I don’t know what the law will say about the ordinance being applicable to our ministers but then, as I said, the law is an
ass!

TILL recently Manohar Kahaniyan was among the most well read Hindi magazines. It had a readership of more than six million, and along with other magazines from the same stable that has now closed - Maya and Satya Katha - had a combined readership of more than 1.5 crore.

But the magazine was never considered a “leader” either in terms of respectability or in terms of shaping public opinion. At best, the magazines were considered as catering either to a section of the readers that wanted obscurantist stories or those who wanted more than a healthy share of melodrama.

The stories in the magazines ranged from a young girl “seeing” ghosts to an account of a crime of passion in a god-forsaken town of Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. The magazines were lapped up by the readers but despite the “market-potential” of such stories, the mainstream media - be it newspapers or magazines - did not allocate any newsprint to it. The editorial leadership of the mainstream media was clear about its social responsibility and knew which stories should not be published. There was a clear demarcation between publications that published “responsible” stories and those that specialised in “underbelly” coverage.

News television in India has changed all this. The bulk of news channels have no consistency of editorial content. While most prime-time bulletins in the evening provide wrap-ups of the most serious political, social, business and sports stories of the day, the late evening slots - repeated during the non-peak hours in the day - are taken by Manohar Kahaniyan “type” crime bulletins where the emphasis is on dramatic presentation. No effort is spared in converting real life tragedies into dramatic “film moments” where someone’s suffering becomes an occasion for viewers’ entertainment.

It took just one news channel to begin the trend of specialised crime bulletins with a news anchor who later got embroiled in a crime of his own. Today not only has the same anchor resurfaced in a new avatar on another channel, but the programme has also spawned several clones each trying to outdo others.

This game of one-upmanship unfortunately is not in the realm of probing nature of reportage and widening the theatre of coverage, but is restricted to more dramatic and sensational presentation.

Similarly, it had taken just one small story on a local channel to begin a spate of stories that could probably walk away with the Indian telly awards for most irresponsible TV coverage.

Within a few days of the first reports news channels were vying with one another to bring more “graphic” reports of the latest developments in the bizarre tale of former IPS officer Devender Kishore Panda.

The thrust of each report on all channels was on providing as much “spectacle” as possible and not trying to go beyond the surface of the story.

Even as the spate of stories continued, there surfaced another story from the same state: this time about a senior officer of the Uttar Pradesh Road Transport Corporation (Gyanendra Pratap Singh) who claimed to be god himself - a slight spin from the Panda story where he claimed to have fallen in love with Lord Krishna.

In their coverage of the second story also, news channels outdid one another when it came to converting a simple story of a senior government official subverting the law. None of the stories probed the bizarre aspect of the claims being made by the two public servants, though in a “sterile” manner the versions of the wives of the two were also presented.

There was no single story that attempted seeking a medical opinion on the reasons why a perfectly normal person was behaving abnormally and making irrational claims.

No such effort was also made in regard to the woman from Madhya Pradesh who claimed to be the wife of former Pakistani cricket captain Wasim Akram. Though it was obvious that there was something wrong with the woman - like in the case of Panda and Singh - none of the news channels tried asking experts whether the three could be suffering from a kind of bipolar disorder - a fairly common mental disease.

The emphasis was clearly on providing an avenue for entertainment for the viewers at the cost of others who either were suffering from delusion or had deliberately raised a smokescreen to resolve issues to their benefit within their families. Either way, the news channels were guilty of not being able to provide “truth” which each channel swears by in their race for the eyeballs.

Irresponsibility has, in fact, become a serial habit with news channels. Witness the so-called initiative of a TV reporter to pay a clandestine visit to Amitabh Bachchan at a time when he was still recovering from surgery in a sterile ICU.

What purpose was served - except may be adding a line to the reporter’s C.V. - by the visit that not only violated the privacy of Bachchan, but also endangered his life.

If there was any real story - and there definitely was one - then it was to dig out the precise ailment that resulted in Bachchan’s hospitalisation. The story lay with doctors, nurses and other staff of the hospital not with a patient who was not in a position to talk for long.

The initiative of the reporter may have been a personal one and dismissed as a case of over-enthusiasm, but news channels should have a mechanism by which such irresponsible acts are not carried. Responsible media organisations have news desks responsible for cutting out any story that crosses the Rubicon, so why not news channels?

DD News has been criticised for underplaying Bachchan’s illness despite its claim that the story was covered in 63 bulletins over a period of one week. The reports on the channel may have been sans the drama that the channels were creating on the streets, but it definitely was not jeopardising anyone’s health. Being conservative has its advantages despite its pitfalls when it comes to coverage.

But private news channels have strategised that “tabloidisation” of the medium is the only quick route to fame, eyeballs and returns. The time for enforcing greater codes and laying down new guidelines could not be more appropriate.

THERE is a clear division as to whose writ runs in Nepal. The state controls cities like Kathmandu, but the Maoists run their own government of sorts in the rural areas.

King Gyanendra has still not made up his mind on democracy. The manner in which people came out in response to the call for “Nepal Bandh” by the Opposition Seven Party Alliance indicates that the restlessness among the people and yearning for a stable government can take a violent turn.

Student-police clashes have become a routine affair with students demanding the restoration of democracy. With support from ousted politicians, more and more people have begun to question the legitimacy of the monarchy. With the Maoists and the politicians joining hands against King Gyanendra, it is a clear message: restore democracy or face the consequences. King Gyanendra is being offered a last chance to exit the political stage. In return, the Maoists say they will give up the armed struggle.

Since the Maoists cannot convert the nation of 27 million people into a communist republic nor take over Kathmandu that is guarded by 35,000 troops, the ball is now in King Gyanendra’s court.

The nation’s economy is in bad shape. Tourism, one of the main revenue earners, is dwindling due to political uncertainty. China supplies arms to Nepal, but the country lacks “management and safe keeping of arms”. Human rights groups urge other countries to stop supplying arms to Nepal until the army becomes accountable to the people.

After King Gyanendra seized power with the help of the army in February, he appointed himself defence minister and assured people about their safety and security. Even the newly appointed Home Minister Kamal Thapa recently assured the nation that all security measures had been beefed up to ensure that the civic elections, to be held Feb 8 next year, were free and fair. But the killing of innocent civilians has shattered that claim. Now most major parties have indicated that they would be boycotting the polls, fearing elections would not be impartial in the absence of an elected parliament.

Liquor consumption is high and it is available at every roadside tea stall. It was an allegedly intoxicated prince that killed his entire family. The Nagarkot incident is also being blamed on an intoxicated army man who picked up a row with villagers and shot dead 11 of them. With a high degree of social and political tension, liquor only serves as ignition.

The less-than-a-decade-old civil war in Nepal has cost around 13,000 lives and 1350 since February (an average of 5 deaths a day) when King Gyanendra seized power and declared a national emergency.

Nepal’s villages are without water, electricity, roads, doctors, teachers — in short no development of any sort. People are beginning to think the Maoists alone can lead them towards development.

King Gyanendra has justified his power grab by promising to restore law and order and improve the quality of public services disrupted by the Maoist insurgency.

THE recent rape and murder of a woman BPO employee by a pick-up driver has exposed just how fragile the foundations of this edifice really are.

While the rape and murder of HP Global Services Development employee Pratibha Srikanthmurthy definitely serves as a wake-up call for the city as well as other established IT centres in the country, it also gives time to cities like Kolkata, Chandigarh and Nagpur, which are hoping to ride on the IT wave, to get their act together.

There is hardly any public transport on the roads at night. BPO companies have no option but to create a pool of thousands of cars to ferry their employees to work and leave them back home at odd hours. These companies have outsourced the logistics of this transportation exercise to private agencies.

Bangalore has traditionally been a peaceful city and this is one of the main reasons for the spread of the IT industry here. However, times have changed. The creation of an IT class in possession of what is seen as easy money has spread discontent all around and made this class the target of crime in the recent past.

IT and BPO employees are easily identified by their lifestyle as well as the identification tags they wear around their neck. Instances of snatching of mobiles and ATM cards of such employees as well as robbing them of their money and jewellary during odd hours are on the rise and the rape and murder of Pratibha is a natural corollary to this.

Pratibha’s case exemplifies how casually BPO companies are taking the pick-up and drop facility. Though the rules state that a woman employee should not either be the first to be picked up or the last to be dropped off, this rule was changed in HP as it has been in other companies because of objections from male employees.

BPO companies claim male employees have felt that implementing this rule means more travel for them to facilitate their female counterparts. With private agencies handling the transportation system, there is a frequent change in drivers and more than a few persons know the mobile numbers of women employees.

Pratibha’s assailant Shivakumar had the former’s mobile number and was able to convince her to accompany him to the office because substitution of drivers and vehicles does not raise eyebrows in this system.

Furthermore, the company failed to react even when the regular driver rang up its travel desk and informed it that a “substitute” vehicle had picked up Pratibha by the time he went to her doorstep.

If Pratibha’s employers did not have a foolproof system in place, she had hardly any hope of salvation from police patrol jeeps while being driven to her death. Bangalore city has only 43 jeeps on patrol duty at night. It needs at least 100 more to cover vast areas under 88 police stations. The staff strength in police stations is also abysmal with a station like Madiwala, which covers areas adjacent to the IT hub having a staff strength on only 40.

Jolted by the rape and murder incident, efforts are being made to take steps to ensure a safer city for women. It has been decided to enumerate BPOs and the number of vehicles being used by them, police verification of all third party workers in the BPO industry and ensuring a woman is accompanied by a security guard if she is picked up or dropped alone at night.

The police also wants call centre vehicles to be fitted with GPS so that their movement can be monitored, besides ensuring women staffers know in advance if the regular driver is not available to pick them up.

To some the part of the Viceroy’s speech in winding up the Delhi session of the Indian Legislative Council that will appear more important than any other was that in which His Excellency asked the hon’ble members to do “what it is perhaps not very easy for them to do, to obliterate from their minds all thoughts of disagreements on domestic business,” to “cast their minds back to the 21st March last year” when “Germany initiated her stupendous offensive on the western front,” and from the contemplation of the harmony and the spirit of friendship that prevailed on the occasion to derive inspiration and strength for the strenuous days that lie before us and in which a newer and better India is to be built up. India to-day can proudly claim her full part and lot in the Empire’s triumph. India now stands on the threshold of a new dispensation.